Research & Strategy:
Challenges Faced:
- Flagship Product was Losing Marketshare to larger competitors that could compete more effectively on price with inferior products.
- Piecemeal Customer Interaction within the product ecosystem was leaving money on the table.
What We Learned (Pains & Priorities):
- Rediscovering Market Needs & Priorities would be essential to differentiating the flagship product redesign.
- Opportunities for Product Synergy were ample, but untapped.
High-Level Goals (OKRs):
- Increase Product-Family Integrations for increased efficiencies for users, both internally with company offerings and with popular secondary competitors.
- Redefine & Deliver on Core User-Needs to compete on innovation rather than price.
- Increase Internal Company Efficiencies to deliver improved customer experiences at reduced cost.
Understanding Opportunities with Competitive Analysis, Personas, & “Vertical Integration” Analysis - In addition to specific project deliverables, an on-going analysis of ISM’s market “vertical” was produced to elicit stakeholder feedback, keep project teams aware of how their work tied in to other areas of the company, and help direct limited resources to where they could be most profitably used.
Precise Requirements and Timelines using User-Story Maps & Process-Flows - For purely digital products, we were able to chart our content & functional requirements across a shared user-story map, while for more complex multi-touchpoint solutions we would use broad process flows to understand the components and their interactions before moving on to the specifics.
Design & Team Leadership:
What We Learned (Insights & Actions Taken):
- Product Requirements were Challenging due to no process being in place to understand users.
- Technical Debt was a Significant Drag on product development, and would need to be carefully accounted for.
- Accounting for the Industry Vertical was key to product integration (internally & externally).
Value Generated (KPIs):
- Increased User-Satisfaction due to increased capability, enhanced learnability, and reduced task times across the entire product family.
- Increased Sales both in terms of direct revenue (SaaS Flagship product), and newly created integrations between supporting products.
- Increased Internal Efficiencies through an comprehensive service design effort that reduced task-times and support costs.
Leveraging Information Architecture & User-Flows for a Seamless Experience - Card-sorting was used with each general type of user (i.e. parents/students, educators, support staff, etc.) to design a unified information architecture. From there we could chart a user’s likely path through the application, how that technology had to respond, and populate each step with the needed content/functionality.
Production Hand-Off and Stakeholder Updates using Wireframes, Responsive Prototypes, & Live Demos -After rough sketches were reviewed by the team, refined wireframes were produced and turned into interactive prototypes for usability-testing. For multi-touchpoint solutions, we used live demonstrations to show stakeholders each iteration of the project in action.
Product Family Consistency achieved through Living Style Guide & Design System - As design work progressed, interface components were standardized and updated through a comprehensive Style Guide, which became the basis of a readily-accessible Design System based upon Pattern Lab’s “mustache” framework. This greatly accelerated work on subsequent projects while maintaining brand consistency.
Testing & Optimization:
What We Learned (Feedback & Priorities):
- Users had Learned by Rote rather than comprehension, making usability and learnability essential for any new SaaS product.
- Product Offerings were Heavily Siloed with users typically being unaware of the potential synergies they could leverage within the wider product family.
Value Generated (KPIs):
- Streamlined Workflows were introduced to increase efficiencies within individual products through greater learnability and consistent design.
- Increased User-Satisfaction & Reduced Technical Debt was achieved through introducing more meaningful feature-sets, greater flexibility around the work needing done, and more dependable/scalable technical frameworks.
- Increased Product Awareness through newly introduced product synergies and user advocacy (initially generated through usability-testing activities).
Refinement Prioritization through Usability-Testing & Stakeholder Reports - Each design stage in our “agile” process was rigorously tested with users, with the resulting feedback being the basis for redesigns and comprehensive monthly progress updates for stakeholders.